CHAPTER XV
TAOISM, LOCAL DEITIES, TREE-WORSHIP
It is not only Confucianism, with its grand ethical system, its acquiescence in Nature-worship and its cult of ancestors, that has built up the curiously unsymmetrical edifice of Chinese religion. Taoism and Buddhism must also be taken into account; and if one can find for them but few words of praise it is only fair to remember that the Taoism of to-day has very little in common with the lofty if sometimes rather misty speculations enshrined in that remarkable old classic the Tao Tê Ching, and that Buddhism—as now practised in north-eastern Shantung and indeed in the greater part of China (excluding certain famous monastic centres)—is perhaps irrevocably degenerate and corrupt. The Tao Tê Ching, the sacred book of Taoism, is generally supposed, probably on insufficient grounds,[334] to have been written by a philosopher known as Lao Tzŭ, said to have been an elder contemporary of Confucius, in the sixth century B.C.
The Taoist philosophy, as set forth in that book, may or may not have been indigenous to China; some writers insist that it was wholly a product of Chinese speculation,[335] while others trace it to early Indian philosophy[336] and even connect it with Buddhism.[337] Though its doctrines are metaphysical as well as ethical, Taoism is to some extent comparable with Confucianism, in which the ethical element is predominant. Indeed most writers have admitted that in enunciating the noble doctrine "Return good for evil," Lao Tzŭ rose to a height never quite attained by Confucius, though the latter also anticipated Christianity by formulating a version of the Golden Rule. One of the best outline comparisons ever attempted between the two systems of Taoism and Confucianism is that recently made by a sympathetic American writer,[338] who concludes with the carefully-weighed and highly important utterance that the two codes combined "furnished at once the foundation and superstructure of as pure, high, and at the same time practical system of ethics as the world has ever seen. It need fear comparison with none. Even that laid down in the Bible, if carefully separated from the religious element here and there intermingled with it, can do no more for man than this ancient system of the Far East can do. And why should it be otherwise, since the two are similar almost to identity, and are, as has been claimed, the necessary outgrowth of the same human spirit."
There is no better augury for future good relations between the thinkers and scholars (if not the Governments and peoples) of East and West than the recent growth of a tolerant and generous spirit on the part of European students of oriental ethic and religion. One still hears constantly of "heathen" and "pagan"—words which, however inoffensive in their original meaning, have come to be regarded as somewhat opprobrious epithets; but that there is a very decided change for the better coming over missionary enterprise in China can be proved very simply by a comparison between the sympathetic appreciation shown in the passage from which the above statement is quoted (written, be it noted, by one who is keenly interested in missionary work in China) and the almost inconceivable bigotry and narrow-mindedness shown by many missionary writers only a few years ago. Even Dr. Legge, the laborious and conscientious translator of the Chinese classics, allowed his Christian prepossessions, as we have already seen, to obscure his judgment and stultify his conclusions. "Their sages, falsely so called," is how he refers to some of the greatest ethical teachers the world has seen.[339] "In January, 1882," writes a doctor of divinity, "a distinguished missionary in China attacked Max Müller as a foe to missions and as a heathen because he had instituted the series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East. The translation itself was an offence; but the use of the title Sacred definitely fixed Müller's status. Moreover, at even a later date, some missionaries in answer to the query from Chinamen 'Where now is Confucius?' were prompt to reply 'In hell.'"[340]
The missionaries of to-day (let us hope against hope that there are no exceptions) have abandoned their old savage belief that the "heathen" as such are destined for eternal damnation. This change of belief is of itself sufficient to revolutionise the attitude of Christian peoples towards those who are not Christians, and surely it makes the need of proselytising the "heathen" infinitely less urgent than it seemed to be when that theory still held sway. "If God be father of all," writes a missionary of fourteen years' standing in China, "it is as impossible to believe in the Bible as the sole written depository of the Spirit of God as in the condemnation of the heathen which once we were constrained to believe it taught."[341]
It is perhaps more necessary to lay emphasis on the value of pure Taoism as an ethical system than on that of the Confucian code, for one is apt—especially if one lives among the Chinese—to condemn Taoism almost unheard on account of the gross superstitions that characterise it at the present day. Popular Taoism is and for many centuries has been a compound of jugglery and fraud, of pseudo-religion and pseudo-philosophy. With all this Lao Tzŭ had nothing to do. That great man and his brilliant successor Chuang Tzŭ—who has been styled the St. Paul of Taoism—founded their theory of life and conduct on a mysterious entity called Tao, a word which has been variously translated Reason, Realisation, the Norm, the Word (λόγος), the Way, the First Cause, Nature, the Idea of the Good (in the Platonic sense), the Creative Principle, Truth, the Metaphysical Absolute, Virtue, Wisdom, God. This is no place for a discussion of the philosophical principles of pure Taoism, which has no visible existence among the farmers of Weihaiwei. All that need be said here is that to understand Tao and to regulate one's life according to Tao was to be a chên-jên, a true man, a Taoist.